Women in Flight

Flying is a hassle.  This is pretty much a universally accepted fact.  In fact, it’s such a hassle, that most of the time, you don’t even see the person who is going to pilot the plane you are on.  And if you do, you forget almost instantly afterwards.  So, if you had a female pilot,you probably wouldn’t even know, or at the very least wouldn’t notice until her voice came over the loudspeaker.

If, before everyone had settled into the plane, you bet the person next to you that your pilot was a man, you would win 19 out of 20 times.  At least, you would in the U.S.  There are many reasons for this.  Fewer women go into the sciences.  Fewer women join the military.  Fewer women work in general.  Some of the male pilots that are remnants from another age still carry with them an “old dog” mentality.  Airlines haven’t been hiring as many pilots since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.  Lots of reasons.  But I think that one of the main reasons that there are more men than women getting their pilot’s license is that the women who are pilots are invisible.

How many times have you seen that picture of Amelia Earhart giving the camera a freckled smile while leaning up against “The Canary”?  You may have seen Harriet Quimby peeking out from under her large goggles and kicking her boots up.  Perhaps you’ve seen Bessie Coleman, former beautician in her leather aviator’s cap.  You probably haven’t seen Blanche Noyes perched on the wing of the “Miss Cleveland” before the 1929 Women’s Air Derby.  Most likely, you don’t even know who she was.

But if you had been born about 80 years ago, you would have.  You would have heard that she was one of the first ten women to get her pilot’s license.  You would know that Bessie Coleman was America’s first African American and first Native American female pilots.  And that Jackie Cochran broke the sound barrier.  And that Jerrie Mock flew around the world.  Because back then, women pilots made the news.  They were advertised and glamorized and people to be admired.  They were household names.

Every day in my car I pass a row of about 12 billboards for Southwest Airlines, featuring their ad campaign “Faces”.  It shows the smiling faces of different employees.  Flight attendants.  Ground control.  Pilots.  Only the flight attendants are women.

1 in 20 may not be a lot, but it does not diminish the fact that they are there.  Let’s not forget them, okay?